Reuters: Three Salvadoran congressmen killed in Guatemala

Full article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N20458461.htm

Whenever there was genocide and mayhem in Central America, he wasn't too far behind...

:tinfoilhat:

It's the 80s all over again!

he set the rules of engagement.

This is horrendous.

I want to read this later.

While RW'ers and the Bush Administration assault Chavez in Venezuela, they support ARENA, and this party has dominated the Executive Branch of El Salvador for years.

this is not Negroponte

Major Roberto D'Aubuisson Arrieta (August 23, 1944–February 20, 1992), a Salvadoran political figure known as Chele, Major Bob and "Blowtorch Bob" by detractors, was a Salvadoran politician and military leader who founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which he led from 1978 to 1985.
(snip)

From 1978 to 1992, during the country's protracted civil war, he is thought to have been a central figure behind the death squads which were implicated in many extrajudicial killings. These included Archbishop Óscar Romero, one of the most prominent Catholic priests in Latin America. On May 7, 1980, six weeks after Romero was assassinated, D'Aubuisson was arrested on a farm, along with a group of civilians and soldiers, in a raid which apparently found a significant quantity of weapons and documents that implicated the group in killing Romero, organizing and financing death squads, and conspiring to bring down the Revolutionary Government Junta (JRG) government, which ruled El Salvador between 1979 and 1982. The arrests triggered a wave of terrorist threats and institutional pressures which culminated in D'Aubuisson's release.
(snip)

He died of throat cancer in 1992 after a long illness. While D'Aubuisson was never convicted during his lifetime of any crimes, former United States Ambassador Robert White told Congress in 1986 that there had been sufficient evidence to convict D'Aubuisson of planning and ordering Romero's murder. White also described D'Aubuisson as a "pathological killer". The current president of El Salvador, Antonio Saca, celebrated on January 20th the anniversary of the death of D'Aubuisson, and promised to continue with the ARENA party based on D'Aubuisson's ideology and legacy.
(snip)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_D'Aubuisson



Roberto_D'Aubuisson's quarry, Bishop Romero



Roberto D'Aubisson

Sunday, 24 March, 2002, 18:28 GMT
US role in Salvador's brutal war

There is a tremendous irony that President George W Bush has chosen to visit El Salvador on the anniversary of the murder of the country's Archbishop, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, 22 years ago.

A campaigner against the Salvadorean army's death squad war, Monsignor Romero was shot through the heart while saying Mass, shortly after appealing to the US not to send military aid to El Salvador.

The appeal fell on deaf ears and for the next 12 years, the US became involved in its largest counter-insurgency war against left-wing guerrillas since Vietnam.

Today US officials are saying that President Bush's visit is in part to celebrate a US success story in which his father was personally involved.
(snip)

It was, according to declassified US documents and other witnesses, carried out by Salvadorean police intelligence agents on the orders of Major Roberto D'Aubuisson.
(snip)

The Salvadoreans were given a list of names of army officers the US wanted removed.
President Bush's aide, who personally handed over the list, was Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North - later discredited for selling weapons to Iran to pay for the CIA's secret wars in Central America.
(snip)

At the same time an elite US-trained army unit murdered six Jesuit priests, the country's leading intellectuals, in cold blood.
(snip/...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1891145.stm

Romero was shot to death on March 24, 1980 while celebrating holy Mass at a small chapel near his cathedral, the day after he gave a sermon in which he called for soldiers as Christians to obey God's higher order and to stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights. According to an audio-recording of the Mass, he was shot moments after the homily, which he had concluded with an improvised pre-Eucharistic prayer thanking God (the homily in the Roman Catholic Rite more or less signifies the end of the Liturgy of the Word and the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist or Mass of the Faithful). It is believed that his assassins were members of Salvadoran death squads, including two graduates of the U.S.-run School of the Americas. This view was supported in 1993 by an official U.N. report, which identified the man who ordered the killing as Major Roberto D'Aubuisson, who later founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), a political party which came to power in 1989 and still rules today. Rafael Alvaro Saravia, Roberto D'Aubuisson's driver, was found liable in connection with the murder by a U.S. court in 2004.
(snip)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%93scar_Romero

Article published by Amnesty Internation in 1996:

EL SALVADOR
The spectre of death squads


December 1996
AI INDEX: AMR 29/15/96
DISTR: SC/CO/GR

SUMMARY

This document outlines Amnesty International's concerns about the resurgence of death squads and paramilitary groups, who were responsible for the systematic murder, torture and "disappearances" of suspected government opponents during the 1980s and early 1990s in El Salvador and contains some illustrative cases.

The recent appearance of the Fuerza Nacionalista Mayor Roberto D'Aubuisson, FURODA (Nationalist Force Major Roberto DAubuisson) and their death threats against public figures, media people and religious leaders, caused growing concern and outrage at national and international level. Groups formed some years ago, like the Sombra Negra, Black Shadow, reportedly created with the aim of combatting crime and as a social clean-up squad, is suspected of being responsible for many death. They have also issued threats against judges and prosecutors.

The Truth Commission set up as a result of the Peace Accords signed in 1992, which ended 12 years of armed conflict between the government and the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, FMLN, Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, recommended a thorough and immediate investigation into death squads since it perceived these groups as posing a continued threat to society. In 1993 the Grupo Conjunto para la Investigación de Grupos Armados Ilegales con Motivación Política en El Salvador, Joint Group to Investigate Politically Motivated Illegal Armed Groups, was created. Its recommendations however, have not been implemented by the government.

The continued existence of death squads, either in their old or new manifestations, undermines the moves towards a truly free and democratic system taking place in El Salvador since the end of the war. It is also a source of continuing insecurity and fear for a population that has suffered years of extremely grave violations to their human rights.
(snip/...)

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR290151996?open&of=ENG-SLV

"You can bet a bag of pretzels that my republicon cronies
will continue to stand by this fine fellow."

- Commander AWOL

Alex Flores Montoya and Mercedes Peñate de Montoya, two well-known FMLN leaders, were found dead last Wednesday in the municipality of Coatepeque, department of Santa Ana. The husband and wife were traveling in their vehicle when they were intercepted by another vehicle. They were then forced to lay face down on the ground, each shot with a single bullet to the head, and abandoned in a nearby alley. Alex Flores Montoya was a teacher in two of the local public schools, and as an FMLN activist he served as the local FMLN board’s adjunct coordinator and ran for municipal council with the FMLN in the March 2006 elections. Mercedes Peñate de Montoya was also a recognized FMLN activist and former candidate to the FMLN municipal council in the March 2000 elections.

The FMLN denounced the death squad-style killings and is demanding a prompt and thorough investigation by the National Civilian Police (PNC) and the Attorney General’s Office (FGR). Luis Corvera, FMLN coordinator for the department of Santa Ana, said last Friday that the crime “cannot be left in impunity.” Corvera expressed the concerns of many Salvadorans saying that the murders are most likely political because the way in which the Montoyas were killed is typical of the Salvadoran death squads of the 1980’s.

http://www.cispes.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=27

who worked entirely for the right-wing as he tortured and murdered innocent citizens. It would look like extreme rage over his father's filthy life spent slaughtering helpless men, women, children, old people, destroying their villages.

Almost everyone killed by the deathsquads, unless they accidently killed one of their own, was either a "lefist" or a suspected "leftists" or "leftist lover" or supporter, etc., etc.

It's the same THROUGHOUT South and Central America and the Caribbean: the same situations plays out again and again and again. The right-wing U.S. Presidents back the right-wing dictators who will allow U.S. business to exploit them, and rape their countries.

So many, many books written on the subject.

Those murderers did what was easy and what would get them maximum benefit in the press.

A by now familiar ploy to us, I'm afraid, similar to the 80+ per cent of the detainees at Gitmo who never pointed a weapon at an American troop.

are responsible for deaths on both sides, as I strongly suspect them of in Iraq. Pit one group against another. Steal everybody blind. They also thrive on fear. Make sure everybody hates everybody else, and that everybody has lots of weapons, and let them go at it, creating a toxic civil atmosphere in which nobody cares, or even knows about, Corporate theft of all the resources. You have to have a certain amount of civil order for people to assert their sovereignty and act to protect their country's resources and social benefits. The Bush Junta are the wreckers of civil order, out to break every agency of organized self-help. We pay our taxes, say, for FEMA and good emergency services, and expect it to be well run. They bust it. Destroy it. And couldn't care less about bloated dead bodies in New Orleans, and thousands of poor people stranded without food and water. All the better to give Halliburton another no-bid contract, for yet more "reconstruction" that will never happen. And there is such a huge, powerful democracy movement in Latin America now, that they must figure only death squad chaos can derail it. The "free trade" looting just made Latin Americans more determined to get THEIR countries back. Mr. Nice Guy looting didn't work (a la Clinton). Back to the death squads--death being the Reaganites/Bushites' most preferred political "control" method.

Ah, me. Well, I think Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador may be in for a rough transition to democracy. But the trend is overwhelming--with leftist (majorityist) governments elected now in Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, and strong leftist movements in Peru and Paraguay (which will bear fruit in the next election cycle). That is virtually the entire continent of South America turned "blue"--way "blue." There is also a new leftist government in Nicaragua, and a strong leftist movement in southern Mexico and Mexico City. I also just heard about a new, popular leftist candidate in Guatemala. I don't think the death squads can stop it. For one thing, these new leftist governments are very smart--they are allying with each other in a great regional self-determination movement. They are resisting "divide and conquer" and doing just the opposite, helping each other out in every way, and now talking of a South American "Common Market" and common currency (to get off the US dollar). And country after country is rejecting the murderous U.S. "war on drugs" and all of its military aid bribery. And I am amazed to see an emerging scandal--and prosecutions and resignations--over paramilitary activity in Colombia, which may signal that even Colombia is starting to make a slow turn to the left. (Left = honest government, of, by and for the people.)

The Bush Junta can cause a lot of trouble and grief--as we know. But I don't think they're going to win--in Latin America, or anywhere else. I just hope that us north Americans--who want so much for the Bush Junta to be ended--don't suffer too much for their many crimes.

as the ruling party tries to re-assert itself in a show of force.

This isn't going to be easy. Mi pobre pueblo. :(

You gotta wonder what these guys were doing there? And whether this was a settlement of old debts or pursuant to some current business.

between the sellouts to BushCo and the people / the left.

I'm scared for the people right now because this is the equivalent of a hit on Jeb and there will be hell to pay for people who had nothing to do with this. :scared:

3 Salvadoran legislators killed in Guatemala in grisly attack
The Associated PressPublished: February 20, 2007

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador: Officials said the grisly killings of three Salvadoran members of the Central American Parliament were premeditated and may have been politically motivated.

Eduardo D'Aubuisson — whose father purportedly led the death squads in El Salvador's 1980-1992 civil war — was killed along with two other lawmakers and a driver, and their charred bodies left on a roadside in Guatemala on Monday, the eve of the 15th anniversary of his father's death.

"It was not by chance," Guatemalan President Oscar Berger said of the killings. "We have various theories, and we are not ruling out the possibility that it was a political crime."

Salvadoran President Tony Saca declined to speculate on a possible motive for the killings, but said the killers had followed the lawmakers car in the capital of Guatemala City and said the crime was "premeditated with brutality, treachery to capture and kidnap them."
(snip/...)

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/21/america/LA-GEN-Guatemala-Bodies-Found.php

I just saw this thread.

That butcher D'Aubuisson used to call my uncle everyday during those fake elections when ARENA was grabbing power. My uncle, I'm sorry to say, is a businessman and a bigot and ARENA all the way. He was here getting heart surgery, and I remember my mother and I gritting our teeth and leaving the room when these calls came in. We couldn't very well call him out -- he was recovering from surgery.

Well, looks like the left is fighting back in El Salvador. My family has always been split right down the middle, or should I say, polarized. If this is the price, so be it.

It was bound to happen.

Well, they were all staunch right-wingers, weren't they?

It would seem someone with bad feelings about the things ARENA has done caught up with the son. There's a ton of stuff to read about their history after they got their boost from Reagan, etc., and it appears they are still going strong.

Hope he took those calls at the hospital, and not at your family's home phone. You really wouldn't want them knowing how to reach you for any reason, would you? That guy was way, way into Republicanism. :scared:

Not only was D'Aubuisson a death squad mass murderer, he was connected to Pat Robertson, and those scums! Now THAT's really scary:

Weekend Edition
September 9/10 , 2006

Testament of the Death Squads
Good Christ, Bad Christ
By GREG GRANDIN

~snip~
The violence of counterinsurgent war stoked the fires of fundamentalist Manichaeism, leading Falwell, Robertson, and others to ally with the worst murderers and torturers in Central and Latin America. “For the Christian,” believes Walton, “there can be no neutrality in this battle: 'He that is not with Me is against Me’ (Matthew 12:30).” Robertson described the genocide carried out by Guatemala’s Efraín Ríos Montt as a “miracle” and celebrated Salvador’s Roberto D'Aubuisson, the killer of, along with untold others, Archbishop Oscar Romero, on his Christian Broadcasting Network. In 1984, more than a dozen Christian New Right organizations, including the Moral Majority, presented D'Aubuisson with a plaque honoring his “continuing efforts for freedom.”

Many of the death-squad members were themselves conservative religious ideologues, taking the fight against liberation theology to the trenches. Guatemalan security forces regularly questioned their prisoners about their “views on liberation theology.” Others report being tortured to the singing of hymns and praying. Some evangelicals excused such suffering. ”Killing for the joy of it was wrong,” a Paralife minister from the United States comforted his flock of Salvadoran soldiers, “but killing because it was necessary to fight against an anti-Christ system, communism, was not only right but a duty of every Christian.”

So when Jeane Kirkpatrick remarked that the three US nuns and one lay worker who were raped, mutilated and murdered by Salvadoran security forces in 1980 were “not just nuns, they were political activists," she was being more than cruel. She was signaling her disapproval of a particular kind of peace Christianity. Over the next ten years, as a direct result of US policy, more than three hundred thousand Central Americans, many of them devout Christians, would be killed and tortured, and over a million driven into exile. In a way, the New Right’s crusade in Central America was a preview of the tormented Jesus that premiered two decades later in The Passion of the Christ -- and, despite Gibson’s drunken dissent, is today on world tour in Boykin’s Abu Ghraib and the killing fields of Iraq and now Lebanon.
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/grandin09092006.html

Half of us were going to FMLN fundraisers and the other half were working for Arena. The world is very small really.

:scared:

But the bigger picture that I fear is the coming repression / retaliation. That will be very bad.

I just had to get that on the record. She could have done something about the slaughter and she only encouraged it.

What a bitch.

No doubt the retalliation will be swift and goddawful. No doubt the right-wing left in America has money burning holes in their pockets from the U.S. right-wing backers, chomping at the bit to get out there and reactivate some massive destructive power.

You can be sure the loons who have checked in here will be beside themselves with glee, like Pat Robertson, if _Bush can participate in some vast scale brutality in the Western Hemisphere against potential "leftists" just like his dear old dad, and Reagan, Nixon, and Eisenhower before him.

for the BFEE to be so obsessed with the Middle East.

Because that meant the Pentagon's ties have been loosened and so on.

I suppose we will see very soon just how "loose" those ties are. :(

/:scared:

3 Charred Bodies Found in Guatemala
By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA
ASSOCIATED PRESS

EL JOCOTILLO, Guatemala (AP) - Police said they found the charred bodies of three Salvadoran representatives to the Central American Parliament and their driver Monday on a rural road outside Guatemala City.

The car they were traveling had bullet holes and was burned. Police did not offer details on the suspected identities or motive of the attackers.

The car and bodies were found in this hamlet about 18 miles southeast of the capital.

Police found the bodies after launching a search for the four men in the late afternoon when they received a report that they had not arrived as expected at their hotel.


http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-sa/2007/feb/19/021900832.html

Never heard of it before the article you posted, which doesn't have volumes to say, but it (C.A.Parliament) does sound strange, considering it was created during the heat of the glory years for death squads, I think. Maybe to combine their power, to develope control over the entire region, the way South American right-wingers tried to do with Operation Condor, by bumping off all the "leftists" they could find, no matter where they were, until they had destroyed, physically, their opposition......

So much for "democracy," right? You kill everyone you don't like? It seems to be the right-wing way, and they are the ones who bray the loudest about their super-duper concept of "democracy." What a farce.

I want to see if I can find more on this "central America Parliament," and see if the Reagan/_Bush administration was the origin.



The late Eduardo D'Aubuisson

Here's new information to me, hope someone else finds it interesting, too:

El Salvador's Death Squads:
New Evidence from U.S. Documents

By Lauren Gilbert

~snip~
Origins of ARENA
The Nationalist Republican Alliance, better known as ARENA, was
"founded in 1981 by Roberto D' Aubuisson -- a former Army intelligence
officer who was cashiered by the military following the 1979 coup."(6)
According to a 1985 CIA intelligence assessment, "Behind ARENA's
legitimate exterior lies a terrorist network led by D'Aubuisson henchmen
and funded by wealthy Salvadoran expatriates residing in Guatemala and
the United States."(7) U.S. documents demonstrate that at the time of
its formation, ARENA was first and foremost a paramilitary organization.
Even as it built itself into a modern political party, it never lost its
paramilitary character, even though some of its members, including
President Cristiani, sought to distance themselves from its more violent
tendencies.

In May 1980, at a farmhouse in Santa Tecla, government troops arrested
a group of twenty-four individuals, consisting of wealthy civilians and
active and retired military officers, including Major D'Aubuisson, Major
Roberto Mauricio Staben, Captain Alvaro Saravia, Lt. Rodolfo Lopez
Sibrian, Antonio Cornejo, Ricardo Valdivieso, and others connected to
the far right. According to U.S. documents,

At the time of the arrest, documents were seized, apparently belonging
to D' Aubuisson, which give clear indication of rightist coup plotting,
including a proposal for a new junta...(8)

Among the documents seized was the notebook of Alvaro Saravia, which
included notations indicating the involvement of members of this group
in the murder of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero and in other
paramilitary activities. Yet despite the evidence against the coup plotters,
they were released within days, and D'Aubuisson fled the country, where
he proceeded to raise money and international support for his political
party the Broad National Front, the predecessor to ARENA.

During this time, D'Aubuisson received tactical and financial support
from wealthy Salvadorans living in exile. According to a State
Department cable from December 1980, one reliable source had indicated
that "a group of four Salvadorans living in Guatemala provided support
for much of the rightist terrorist activity that occurs here." The group
consisted of Roberto D'Aubuisson, Col. Eduardo Iraheta Gonzalez
Suvillaga, Col. Eulalio Santivanez, and Col. Eduardo Melendez.
According to the source, D'Aubuisson "maintains direct contact with
Minister of Defense Garcia," headed the "Maximiliano Hernandez
Martinez Anti-Communist Brigade" and was "responsible for creating
some of the country's leading death squads."(9)

Miami also provided a critical link to death-squad activities. In January
1981 a "highly respected Salvadoran lawyer" informed Ambassador Robert
White and Deputy Chief of Mission Mark Dion "that a group of six
Salvadoran millionaire emigres in Miami have directed and financed
rightwing death squads here for nearly a year," and that they were
threatening other businesspeople who did not cooperate with their
political plan. According to the source, this group of six "enormously
wealthy former landowners who lost great estates in Phase I of the
agrarian reform" had the following strategy:

To rebuild the country on a new foundation it must first be destroyed
totally, the economy must be wrecked, unemployment must be
massive, the Junta must be ousted and a "good" military officer
brought to power who will carry out a total "limpeza" (cleansing),
killing three or four or five hundred thousand people, whatever it
takes to get rid of all the communists and their allies.(10)
(snip/...)

http://ciponline.org/dethsqud.htm

Revolutionary management in El Salvador
A transport strike paralysed El Salvador last month after the rightwing government rejected a traffic plan that had been negotiated by San Salvador’s leftwing mayor. Former guerrilla fighters now rule the capital and the outcome of the 2004 presidential elections may depend on them.

By Karim Bourtel

~snip~
3) In 1980 Robert White, the former US ambassador to El Salvador, described Roberto d’Aubuisson Sr, who died in 1992, as a "psychopathic killer". As the overseer of El Salvador’s death squads, he is believed to have masterminded the murder of San Salvador’s archbishop, Oscar Romero.
(snip)

Reference to his brother:

Roberto d’Aubuisson, an Arena member of the Legislative Assembly’s public works committee and son of the "archangel of the death squads"
(snip)

Fifteen years of Arena party rule have seen "the ruthless privatisation of public services, whopping price increases and the continued impoverishment of the populace", complains one NGO director. "Over the space of three years the gas and telephone bills have gone up threefold. Water, health and education are now all we expect", she adds. Sociologist Antonio Uribe explains: "The peace accord emphasised institutional reform. Unlike Colombia’s revolutionary armed forces (FARC), which invariably bring up economic issues during negotiations, such questions have never been raised in El Salvador" (9).

Owing to geopolitics and power struggles stemming from the massive US presence in Central America, the 1992 peace accord, which instituted democracy and the rule of law following years of repression at the hands of a reactionary oligarchy and the military, left other key issues unresolved. In defence of El Salvador’s former guerrilla fighters, their only option was to fight a long and bloody war even though a military victory was unimaginable.

Ten years later, Central America’s smallest nation now seems beset by natural forces (measuring only 21,000 km2, El Salvador is slightly smaller than Sardinia). Two earthquakes rocked large sections of the country early last year and a severe drought struck in the months that followed. The country is on its knees, dependent on international aid. More than 1m Salvadorians live in exile in the US and their remesas (remittances) help to shore up El Salvador’s economy (10). The people are unanimous in their call for an end to one-party rule, with the FMLN representing one alternative. The polls show Silva as the frontrunner in the 2004 presidential race. For many on the left, Silva is the most "respectable" FLMN candidate: he triggers the least virulent reaction from rightwingers. It remains to be seen if Silva will be able to establish his name in the political debate that is sweeping the nation (see box).

The people’s desire for a new president might not translate into a FMLN victory, even though the FMLN increased its share of the vote in the 2000 municipal and legislative elections while Arena’s support fell, a trend that began in 1997. But the gap separating the long-suffering people and the political classes is illustrated by the abstention rate, which reached 62% in 2000; thus only 11.7% of those registered voted for the FMLN in 2000 (11). The FMLN is currently gaining valuable experience in grassroots democracy: the administrative skills it demonstrates at the council level (especially in San Salvador), and its ingenuity and talent at overcoming rightwing obstacles, will prove that the party is ready to govern. El Salvador is awaiting such evidence so that 75,00 people did not die in vain."
(snip/)

http://mondediplo.com/2002/03/09salvador

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BACKGROUND:

ALFREDO CRISTIANI
President of El Salvador
General Hernandez Martinez's 1932 anti-communist purge, was carried out on behalf of El Salvador's rich coffee oligarchy, the so-called "Fourteen Families". New president Alfredo Cristiani is a member of those same " Fourteen Families", and his ARENA party is linked to brutalities surpassing Hernandez Martinez's. Cristiani is moderate-sounding, schooled in Washington D. C., and indebted to the military for power. As puppet - president, he yielded to ARENA founder Roberto D'Aubuisson, whom a former US Ambassador called a "pathological killer". D'Aubuisson, a former Army Major with ties to Jesse Helms and the US right, studied unconventional warfare in the U S and Taiwan. According to D'Aubuisson, "the Christian Democrats (Ex-President Jose Napoleon Duarte's party) are communists, but Jesuit priests are "the worst scum of all". US State Department cables indicate D'Aubuisson "planned and ordered the assassination of the late Archbishop Oscar Amulfoo Romero". It's believed he was behind the White Warriors Union (UGB), whose slogan was "Be patriotic-kill a priest". In 1989 six priests were slain and Cristiani soon admitted his US trained soldiers had committed the murders. Yet, although assassinations of priests are notable, 70,000 other civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military and the death squads since 1980.
(snip/)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

~~~~~ click ~~~~

The archangel of death squads, Roberto d'Aubuisson, Sr.

PAT ROBERTSON,
ROBERTO D'AUBUISSON &
THE DEATH SQUADS
by: S.R. Shearer
In the Spring of 1984 Pat Robertson and CBN reporter Norm Mintle traveled to El Salvador where they met with the late Roberto D’Aubuisson. Following the trip, the "700 Club" aired four 20-30 minute segments on El Salvador, the major theme being that D’Aubuisson was a "very nice fellow" who was being maligned by the "biased liberalism" of Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report.

D’Aubuisson - a very nice fellow? Hardly! D' Aubuisson was considered to be the most nortorious torture and Death Squad leader in El Salvador; he was described by Robert White, former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, as a "pathological killer," and was widely known as "Major Soplete" (i.e., "Major Blowtorch").

How is it possible that Robertson could have described him as "a very nice fellow?" - but that's the kind of "purposeful blindness" which has become altogether too much the hallmark of those evangelicals who have gotten mixed up in politics. God preserve us from those who have been so blinded, and from their leaders - it's a case of the blind leading the blind! (Matt 15:14)

When confronted with the facts concerning those with whom they have allied themselves, evangelical leaders like Robertson don't even bother confronting the facts themselves, but with a wave of their hand they simply lie and dismiss the allegations outright. Truly it can be said of them: "Having ears to hear, they hear not, and eyes to see, they see not!" (Mark 8:18)

There will be a reckoning someday, and on "that day" it will not go well for many of the leaders of today's evangelical church.

Please see Report on Human Rights in El Salvador, America Watch Committee (New York: Random House, 1982); also State Terrorism and the Death Squads by William Lavellel; unpublished manuscript, California State University, Sacramento, 1983.
(snip/)

http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000045.htm

the idea is that ARENA was trying to put lipstick on their pig and the Church said no:

El Salvador: They demand to deny son title meritísimo to D'Abuisson
By GERMAN MARKS

San Salvador — the organization Legal Trusteeship of the capital archbishopric requested Wednesday to the Congress to reject the request to grant the title of "Meritísimo Son of El Salvador" to the deceased greater D'Abuisson Robert, to whom they accuse to have had participation in crimes of lesa humanity.

Deputies of the governing Nationalistic Republican Alliance (SAND) recently asked for the Legislative Assembly that grants the mentioned honorary distinction to him to D'Abuisson, founder of this political party.

The director of Legal Trusteeship, Maria Julia Hernandez, to name of the Archbishopric, by ricochet formulated the request in an ample document sent to the Congress and also to the Organization of United Nations and the Organization of American States (O.A.S.) where explains the reasons.isson was a person who did not measure the consequences to assassinate, to disappear and to torture people who considered opponent of the government and the Armed Forces in that then ".

http://66.218.71.231/language/translation/translatedPage.php?tt=url&text=http%3a//www.mundohispanico.com/paises/content/gen/ap/America_Latina/AMC_GEN_EL_SALVADOR_DABUISSON.html&lp=es_en&.intl=us&fr=yfp-t-501

In the 2006, the ex- captain of the Salvadoran Air Force Alvaro Rafael Saravia broke his silence of 26 years in an exclusive interview with the American newspaper the New Herald and requested pardon to the church by his participation in the murder of Romero.

I assume that's the Miami Herald's "El Nuevo" which got that news. It sounds as if he was trying to wriggle out from under the burden of guilt he had carried all those years, doesn't it? He must be INSANE. (I just got carried away and slaughtered a lot of people, including the good man who had been trying to help people his whole life? Now THAT'S right-wing, for ya! He simply expects others to suck it up. If he had a conscience, he would have killed himself, or at least spent the rest of his life trying to make restitution for his depraved crimes against humanity.)


http://www.ice.gov/pi/investigations/wanted/rafael_saravia.htm

Independent investigations by the Truth Commission of El Salvador and the UN Inter-American Human Rights Commission concluded that Saravia actively participated in the planning and carrying out of the March 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero.

Saravia, a former Salvadoran air force commander, was the right-hand man of Roberto D’Aubuisson, the well-known ringleader of the Death Squads.

The Law of Amnesty—approved March 20, 1993, a time when the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly was dominated by the party representing the Death Squads—prevented those that were victims of the terrible military rule from seeking justice the Salvadoran courts. Saravia was detained in the United States in 1987 after the Salvadoran federal prosecutors requested his extradition for his role in the assassination.

The Salvadoran Supreme Court later retracted the extradition petition by way of United Nations Truth Commission, the Inter-American Commission and several other questionable human rights organization with political motivations. Since being released on bail in 1988, Saravia has lived in California and Florida. Amnesty International and other groups have denounced his presence in the U.S. Ever since being released, he and his family have enjoyed all the benefits of a U.S. citizen.

Retrieved from "http://www.terrorfileonline.org/en/index.php/Alvaro_Rafael_Saravia"

More: http://www.cja.org/cases/romero.shtml

Right-wingers are a soul-less, spiritless, zombie group all of their own. What OTHER group on the face of the earth would try to heap more honors upon a bloodthirsty butcher like d'Aubuisson? Truly the scum of the earth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

("If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people." Archbishop Romero, in a sermon delivered the day before his assassination.)
http://blog.zmag.org/ee_links/american_terror1

I was just told that last week, the commander of Salvadorean forces in Iraq published an open letter in La Prensa Grafica which talked bluntly about atrocities, torture.

I can't load that site and can't find his letter anywhere else (gee, what a surprise). Maybe I can get my new machine up by tonight.

But, that's a LOT of activity for El Salvador in just the last week . . .

The open atrocity confession letter, d'Aubuisson's son killed with fellow right-wing loons....

It would be very important to know what is behind it all. Also, what has happened here, maybe, to add or remove pressure there, in case there's an immediate connection.

Please do tell us if you learn any more, sfexpat2000. One really learns to suspect the worst due to what we've observed through history by now, but a confession is very unusual, any time.

to the right wingers because that is where they launder their money, for one thing. :shrug:

As to "limpieza" -- in the very same way benighted people here talk about "taking out" "terrorists and leftists" (i.e, jumbling up these categories because it is politically convenient for BushCo to jumble them), in El Salvador they used to talk about "cleaning out the hills" of so called communists, guerrillas and Indians.

So you see, the masses of poor people are in this way defined as "the problem" rather than as the victims of power and wealth that only seeks to increase itself at any cost. Or, that was the situation last I had a contact in El Salvador. I don't imagine the right has changed much in the last few years.

It's easy to see that attitude has been seeping out, or even surging out for hundreds of years throughout Latin America, and the Caribbean, and also the U.S.

It's because of it the elite have found it so easy to always seek and cultivate power among themselves ruthlessly, at the great expense of the vast majority in Latin America, and the Caribbean.

"Cleaning out the hills........."
Well, they surely did, didn't they?

~snip~
The name "El Mozote," once a village in Morazan department in northeast El Salvador, does not appear on the Army's web site. It was there that this good soldier, so admired by his men and well liked by the U.S. military advisors, in command of the Atlacatl battalion, wrote his page in the annals of world atrocity. That story should not be forgotten.

In El Mozote and neighboring small villages, between December 10 and 13, 1981, the men of the Atlacatl murdered in cold blood at least one thousand men, women and children. There was no combat there; these civilians were not even guerrilla sympathizers. Most of them were Protestants, politically conservative and supporters of the government, who believed they had good relations with the Salvadoran military. For that reason they had ignored warnings from the FMLN that they should evacuate their homes before the coming army sweep through the area. Some people even arrived in El Mozote from other towns, thinking that they would find a safe haven there until the fighting was past.

The murders were carried out deliberately. First, men were tortured for information that they did not have, and then killed. Most of the women were repeatedly raped before being murdered. Hundreds of children came last. A little boy who escaped saw his two year old brother hung from a tree by a soldier. A survivor--from El Mozote itself there was only one--heard some soldiers saying that they didn't want to kill the children; their lieutenant told them they themselves would be shot if they didn't obey orders. This woman, whose name is Rufina Amaya Marquez, lost her husband and four children in the massacre. While hiding to save her life, she heard her own children among many others screaming for help as they were butchered. Finally, all the buildings of the town were burned, and with them the bodies of hundreds of victims wounded and dead.1

The troops were not out of control. Their commanders, including Col. Monterrosa, were present during the operation, which was done at their orders. Why? There is only one answer: it was terrorosm. If even people such as these, whom the army knew did not support the guerrillas, were slaughtered, what must happen to villagers who did help the FMLN? Years later reporter James LeMoyne heard as unguarded answer from Monterrosa himself. "Yeah, we did it," he said. "We killed everyone. In those days I thought that was what we had to do to win the war. And I was wrong."2

It is worth repeating that the rapid response (counter insurgency) battalion Atlacatl was organized, trained, and equipped by the United States. The unit's preparation was begun in 1980 and completed early in 1981. The Atlacatl and its commander continued to be favored by U.S. military advisors in El Salvador.
(snip/...)

http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~lamperti/Trojan_Horse.html



Carrying the remnants of their murdered loved ones in El Mozote.

atrocity. I can't tell you how awful that is to know. It's like some insane generational handing down of wrong after wrong after wrong and worse.

To my mind, it's as though they took on the ideology of their oppressors and with a vengeance born of their own oppression.

The only comfort that can be found is in the tenacity of the left, in the resilience of the people who refuse to yield anything to this tyranny. And in our families, the rift is often intimate. My leftist grandmother wrote political analysis under a pseudonym the entire time her husband was collaborating with the right and serving in the rightist government. That's El Salvador.

But yet the family remains. It must be strong. Personal love appears to reach across ideological differences in this case, built upon something deeper. It's overwhelming. Painful, too, without a doubt.

Just the things I read overnight looking for more info. on d'Aubisson tells me your uncle was probably very highly valued by that group to be on their personal phone list, following him all the way to the States. Looks as if that government operated for a while almost in theory, since so many of them were scattered around following the extreme rough stuff in El Salvador, in the 1980's, and their flight out of the country.

I guess it's anyone's guess how much of the 1980's government has been transplanted to South Florida!

You are lucky to have had such an intelligent, and committed grandmother. She sounds very forward-thinking for that time, let me assure you. I've seen so many women of her generation who hid far in the depths of their homes, who would have been terrified at the thought of committing themselves like that to work for change.

You just can't buy that kind of relative, can you? Wow.

that marks the spot.

She came from landed wealth and spent her life fighting for equality. He came from poverty and spent his life climbing the rungs of that society. I don't think they were special except insofar as they both succeeded in their goals to a degree. That's just El Salvador.

El Salvador envoys slain in Guatemala
3 lawmakers were on trade mission

By Hector Tobar and Alex Renderos
Tribune Newspapers
Published February 21, 2007


SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- Three Salvadoran legislators, including a scion of one of the country's leading right-wing families, were kidnapped and slain during a trip to neighboring Guatemala and their bodies set ablaze, officials said Tuesday.

The congressional deputies were all members of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance and were killed Monday night along with their driver as they paid an official visit to Guatemala City. Their charred bodies and gutted vehicle were found on a farm outside the city.
(snip)

The killings come amid a wave of lawlessness in Guatemala, which has become a haven for organized crime and a way station for the transshipment of illicit drugs from South America to the U.S., according to American officials.

The three legislators had left San Salvador by car early Monday for a meeting in Guatemala City of the Central American Parliament, a body that seeks to promote and regulate trade in the region.

Investigators said the three legislators traveled with other Salvador officials to Guatemala City in a four-car caravan. After crossing the border, the caravan was escorted by the Guatemalan National Police. Once in Guatemala City, the caravan broke up and the legislators left behind their police escort.
(snip/...)http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0702210222feb21,1,3891837.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed